Friday, January 23, 2009

In the next few days, we are going to experiment with our set-up and try out playing our songs in different ways.

Anyways, last night was a great show at the Echo with Infinite Body, Hecuba and High Places whom we both love wand respect with high regard. We went to see the show with Andrew who is so happy that High Places lives in LA now, he danced like there was no tomorrow. Olrayts!

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Last week we made our way up to Santa Barbara. We played on the local college radio station, KCSB 91.9 FM and made some new friends! I have to say that this trip helped make me bliss; exploring! creating! and sharing music!

We drove up Thursday night and played on the radio show 5...4...3...2...Fun! with radio host Josh from the band Watercolor paintings. Josh is a rad guy who always welcomes bands onto his show each week.

We played just over a half hour set and gave a one hour seminar about our political and socio-economic beliefs. It was really fun!!!!

We didnt have much of a plan, but Josh was nice enough to let us crash in his living room. We woke up and made our way to a beautiful butterfly preserve. It's the season for Monarch butterflies to migrate through the area, particularly, a Eucalyptus field. You walk inside, stand still, look around and begin to see swarms of butterflies emerge from the shadows, fly out of mossy logs and rest on blades of grass blowing in the breeze.

Gabe and Katya met us on the beach just in time for sunset. We ate some mediocre sushi and went to see Josh's band play at a house party at UCSB. It's a great community of people and bands, definitely worth checking out!

Soon enough, it was time for us to go home. Traveling and experiencing other people's creations is the best. Next time we can stuff you in our trunk and take you along with us...

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

We finally finished a new EP of home recorded songs that we have been working on. Its been fun trying to learn and experiement with "production techniques" and all that chu-chu. Gotta admit, I'd still prefer just pressing record and playing the whole song through but this was good for us to make something different more based on concepts for recorded material instead of just songs to be played live which for me have always been two different art forms. Except for one song, most the songs weren't originally intended for us to be played live. We made most of it with a lot of additional instrumentations and had fun with effects pedals during recordings. But perhaps we might reconfigure some of it and transpose it to our live sets or if we can find people who wouldn't mind playing small but crucial parts in some songs. Who knows? Anyways, the little EP is called "Spooky Snow" and its our little winter album for all of you. You can get it from our shows or through Paypal for 5 bucks. All the proceeds will go to funding for zines that we will be making. Anyways, if you have nothing to do on Thursday at 10 pm, we'll be on air in KCSB 91.9 UC Santa Barbara's COllege Radio. If you want you can give us a call and we can play requests for Mariah Carey and Carpenters covers. Thats all for now. Get "Spooky Snow".

Friday, January 9, 2009

We just made several new songs this week which we a re excited to play. Its been a really crazy Holiday and too much partying since Kwanzaa. Rhea is kinda getting sick and losing her voice, hopefully she'll be much better next week because we'll be heading to Santa Barbara to be on 5432Fun, which is a radio show on KCSB hosted by the other half of Watercolor Paintings, Josh. The other half is her sibling, Rebecca, who plays the harp. We've been listening to previous episodes of the show online and really dig the songs he plays in the show. This will be our first time on the radio so it will be fun especially since its kinda out of town and in a college radio. We've been wondering what kind of set-up we're gonna bring but i think we agreed to just play with keys and drums. We are hoping to stay in Santa Barbara until Saturday and hope to find some fun things to do. Maybe we can go to a show or play some impromptu house party or just have fun. We are also looking forward to the Echo Curio show on the 19th. Our great friends The Health Club will play first then us then Billygoat. We also went to The Smell last night to check out Campfire, Sun Araw and Pocahaunted. Rhea wasn't feeling so good, especially after swimming in a sea of noise and drone so we had to leave early -she was getting sick. There were still a lot of people on the streets though it was very cold and foggy. I realized it was because of the Downtown Artwalk. Anyways, i hope you are smiling hard in reading this, lone reader!

P.S. Rhea has been doing the Only For The Open-Minded zine which you can find at some local venues and i've been getting busy in making the Smile Hard zine which i have made available online and some local venues like Pehrspace, The Smell, and soon Don's Records and The Echo Curio.

“Dub offered the perfect score to the world’s deepening post-colonial dusk. Started, so legend goes, by Kingston's King Tubby in his studio on 18 Drumille Avenue, dub is basically this: a song sunk into the cavernous depths of a mixing board, stripped of its secure pop substances, and returned to the world as an electrified monster or vampire. (It's no accident that vampires appear on the covers of numerous dub LPs.) With dub, what was once flesh and bone is transformed into vague melodies that suddenly appear and vanish, moans that rise and recede, and bass lines that move through the echo-haze like phantoms in a haunted house.Dub is the "ghost dimension" of the real pop song; there is no body in dub, just a flickering afterimage of what was once a body.” (Charles Mudede)